Stocker’s Earmark: An Update

Interesting news at Bishop Hill. A UK minister informed David Holland’s MP that the extra secrecy measures at IPCC, arising from the instigation of Phil Jones and persistence of Thomas Stocker, arose unintentionally and as a “drafting error”.

The Inter Academy Council had strongly endorsed transparency at IPCC:

it is essential that the processes and procedures used to produce assessment reports be as transparent as possible.

Transparency is an important principle for promoting trust by the public, the scientific community, and governments. Interviews and responses to the Committee’s questionnaire revealed a lack of transparency in several stages of the IPCC assessment process, including scoping and the selection of authors and reviewers, as well as in the selection of scientific and technical information considered in the chapters.

This had been strongly opposed by Phil Jones, (see CA post here which reviews Jones’ correspondence with Stocker.) Stocker led a bureaucratic counter-offensive urging more confidentiality:

Confidentiality is part of the basic way in which IPCC goes about its work..

Stocker’s bureaucratic intrigues (see CA post here and David Holland here) led to the adoption of language at the May 2011 IPCC meeting that increased confidentiality (see contemporary Bishop Hill post here).

As a result of David Holland’s further initiatives, the UK Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change wrote to his MP as follows:

We are aware that this new text would mean that reviewers would not have the opportunity to see how their comments had been addressed by IPCC authors before acceptance of the final report. It was not the IPCC’s intention to change the procedures in this way and it is likely a drafting error. Indeed, the intention of the update in the procedures was to increase openness in the way that IPCC reports are prepared. We understand that the IPCC is aware of this issue and intends to address it at the next appropriate opportunity.

The documents for the June IPCC meeting are here. The proposal in Doc11 merely puts back the Stocker-Jones deletion:

All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process.

This does not implement what the UK government’s stated view is:

We are aware that this new text would mean that reviewers would not have the opportunity to see how their comments had been addressed by IPCC authors before acceptance of the final report. It was not the IPCC’s intention to change the procedures in this way and it is likely a drafting error.

Lets see if the Minister sticks to his statement and insists on a proper review process.

Restoring the former status quo does not sufficiently empower reviewers. Reviewers should be entitled to see the file of Review COmments and Responses from the point at which they become available. The IPCC TSU interprets “review period” very narrowly to only be the period when drafts are out for comment. In practice, this means that interested reviewers can see the First Draft review comments (without responses) during the 6 weeks of the Second Draft review. And never see Second Draft review comments (or responses) until public availability.

It was not the IPCC’s intention to change the procedures in this way and it is likely a drafting error.

No, Minister.

A drafting error is when someone transcribes a document and, for example, inadvertently leaves the word “not” out a sentence such as this: “The IPCC will not tolerate compromises in its policy of openness and transparency.”

A drafting error is when someone transcribes a document and, for example, inadvertently INSERTS the word “not” into a sentence such as this: “The IPCC will not tolerate compromises in its policy of openness and transparency.”

“All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process.”

The rest of us peons will, of course, not be privy to this material until after publication. What is not indicated is:

a) Whether or not the material to be made available includes the “chapter team’s” responses

b) Whether or not such disclosure will require that the requestor agree not to quote, cite, distribute, etc before receiving such material.

Perhaps between now and June 6, Stocker the stick-handler will succeed in engineering a further delaying tactic in order to advance the need for “confidentiality” about which he and Jones were so concerned [she says somewhat skeptically].

Not to mention that the IPCC does not have a particularly good record when it comes to following its own procedures.

Has someone kept a chronicle of the attempts to subvert transparency in IPCC while proclaiming adherence to same? IIRC, first there was Santer’s last-minute tinkering with the Summary for Policymakers. Then Caspar and the Jesus Paper. Then the exclusion of Steve and Ross’s report on UHI. Now Stocker (see CG2 emails quoted by Steve in last Stocker post, between him and Jones) tries to formally (or otherwise) amend the IPCC rules to keep out transparency again, in ways strongly reminiscent of the familiar “hide the decline”.

[Prof Stocker is] an intelligent, well-mannered and rational man, in a position of great influence…

It was striking that not once did he suggest that the models’ uncertainties (or “errors” in Oldspeak) should be established by comparing their “predictions” against measured data. The only sources of uncertainty with which Prof Stocker seemed concerned were between and within models. It seemed comparison with what was supposedly modelled was not relevant.

There was another troubling note in that Prof Stocker referred several times to “deniers”…

If ever “nomen est omen” was valid, this is it. If my name were Sticker, I would be an alarmist, too.
But let us remember the guy from the same University of Bern who resigned after the CERN-neutrino fiasco. A real scientist.
And the actual hockey-stickers of Bern, who placed a very good second in the Swiss championship (this is a bit of a joke on the good people of Bern who are probably still crying about that last second decider).